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How To Avoid Being Ghosted On Craigslist

If you are like me, the first time I heard the phrase of being ghosted on Craigslist I had absolutely no idea what that meant. I quickly found out as I began marketing on Craigslist.

There were times that after I placed the ad on Craigslist that it actually wasn’t posted on the site. Everything on my end looked as if it had gone through – I even got a link and could see my ad – but when I went to the site, selected the category, and tried it find it…it wasn’t there. Ghosted.

I’ve learned and have implemented some strategies I’ve discovered to lessen or even avoid being ghosted on Craigslist.

Post Ads Locally (beginners). Craigslist tracks your I.P. address (the physical location of your computer). If you live and are posting in Phoenix, but place an ad in Sacramento, Craigslist will catch on and either shut you down or ghost your ads. Stay local.

For advanced users, there are tools out there that can change your I.P. address to change the location of your choosing, but that’s for another post.

Use Image Ads. When you place a text ad, Craigslist has the ability to track/read it and will start ghosting commonalities. Especially when there are actual links to external websites. That’s probably the quickest way to get your ads ghosted.

I use Microsoft Word and Paint on my computer to create an image ad. After the ad is created using Word, I use the “select all” feature, copy, and then paste into Paint and then save it as an image. Below is an example of one of my image ads:

Avoid Using Fancy Titles. It is true that having a fancy ad title will attract more people to click your ad, but it is also true that the ad will be flagged and removed more quickly. At most, just use all caps to catch the eye.

There you have it! My top three strategies while marketing on Craigslist and how to avoid from being ghosted. The key is consistency. Just post one or two ads per day and the leads will come.